007 Bubblegum

This recipe was a bit of a personal challenge for me. The goal was to convert my cola into a bubblegum with the fewest amount of changes possible. It started out with some research on what goes into making a bubblegum. It turns out that the flavoring components used in gum are already fairly in line with many other recipes from the 20th century, using things like cinnamon, vanilla, and citrus oils. The significant differences were the inclusion of mint, which makes sense for a chewing gum, and the inclusion of flavors such as banana and strawberry in more modern versions. </lb> I started out by removing VT Fizzy Sherbet because bubblegum isn't fizzy, and it doesn't have a dominant lemon/lime flavor. TPA Wintergreen took its place, and then I started trying various fruits out to see the effect they would have. Strawberry was my initial assumption, so I tried out WF Strawberry Gummy Candy, INW Shisha Strawberry, TPA Ripe Strawberry, and several others. None of them were headed in the right direction so I broke out my banana flavors and started smelling them. My first idea was to use WF Banana Candy, but it didn't fit the bill so I moved onto WF Banana Puree. As soon as I smelled it I knew that was the right choice, so the rest was a percentage game. 1% was the perfect amount to not stand out from the rest of the mix as an obviously banana flavored gum. The real issue was finding the correct percentage for TPA Wintergreen. I tried out everything from .5% to 2% and found myself lingering at 1% originally. Unfortunately the brighter parts of the orange and banana were still a bit too apparent after a steep, so I moved the wintergreen up to 1.25% and then 1.5%. </lb> Now that the development notes are out of the way I need to thank some awesome people. Graham was the person that really planted the idea in my head. I was originally against it for the most part because there are already some awesome bubblegum flavors available like MB American Bubblegum. It wasn't until Dave commented on a Reddit post that I should make 007 Bubblegum that I actually committed to the idea. Then once I was fairly happy with the mix I asked a few people to try it out for me. Eyemakepizza and Shyndo were kind enough to give it a shot and they both seemed to really enjoy it. Shyndo made an excellent point about the validity of this creation. He noticed that bubblegum flavors were difficult to work into a mix because they were mostly top-notes that would clash with other fruits. So after testing this out with some additional fruits I felt better about this silly project. Feel free to make your own version of this recipe using your favorite fruit flavoring and let me know what you think.